Russia missile strike on Ukraine base close to
Polish border kills 35, governor says
Bombing close to Lviv follows Kremlin warning that
supply lines were ‘legitimate targets’; town of Volnovakha ‘ceases to exist’
after bombardment
Luke
Harding in Yavoriv, Peter Beaumont and Lorenzo Tondo in Lviv
Sun 13 Mar
2022 11.17 GMT
Russia has
escalated its war in Ukraine with a strike on a major military base close to
the Polish border killing at least 35 people and injuring 134 more, according
to the governor of the Lviv region.
The attack
happened hours after the Kremlin had warned that western supply lines into the
embattled country were “legitimate targets”.
There were
large explosions on Sunday at the base in Yavoriv, a garrison city less than 10
miles from the Polish border. The rocket attack took place at 5.45am.
“My windows
shook. The whole house vibrated. It was dark. The sky lit up with two
explosions,” said Stepan Chuma, 27, an emergency worker who hurried to the
scene with his colleagues.
The
facility has previously hosted foreign military trainers from the UK, US and
other countries but it is not clear that any were at the base. Ukraine held
most of its drills with Nato countries there before the invasion with the last
major exercises in September.
“Russia has
attacked the International Centre for Peacekeeping & Security near Lviv.
Foreign instructors work here. Information about the victims is being
clarified,” the Ukrainian defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said in an online
post.
The
governor of the Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyi, said Russian forces fired more
than 30 cruise missiles at the Yavoriv base. The 140 square-mile facility less
than 25km (15 miles) from the Polish border, is one Ukraine’s biggest and the
largest in the western part of the country – and serves a similar function to
the British army’s training areas on Salisbury Plain.
The attack
on the base is highly significant for a number of reasons. Long viewed with
suspicion by Russia – whose media has claimed falsely that in the past the
facility was a secret Nato base in Ukraine – the proximity, so close to the
Polish border, marks a sharp escalation in the scope of Russian airstrikes.
There has
been speculation too that the area has been used both to receive incoming
weapons shipments for Ukraine’s military as well as training the large numbers
of foreign volunteers flocking to the country.
Simon
Shuster of Time magazine, who was in the area the day before, said on Twitter:
“When Russia bombed the base near Lviv last night, it had to assume Americans
were likely to be killed or injured. A coordinator of foreign volunteers in
Ukraine told me the base was a hub for 1000s of them, coming from all over to
help Ukraine. I met some from US, UK, Australia.”
The attack
comes less than 24 hours after Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei
Ryabkov, warned that western shipments to Ukraine were “legitimate targets”.
Supporters
of Ukraine, including the UK, Germany and the US, have been shipping thousands
of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles into Ukraine using the country’s
western corridor in the Lviv region.
Ryabkov
said that Russia had “warned the US that pumping weapons from a number of
countries it orchestrates isn’t just a dangerous move, it’s an action that
makes those convoys legitimate targets”.
The attack
is thought to be the westernmost carried out by Russia in 18 days of fighting.
Air raid
sirens had been heard on previous nights in Lviv, a Unesco world heritage site
50 miles (80km) from the border with Poland and a safe haven for hundreds of
thousands of internally displaced Ukrainians. But although the city’s 700,000
residents are among the strongest supporters of Ukrainian independence from
Moscow, it has so far remained untouched by Russian bombing.
The war
continued to rage across the rest of Ukraine on Saturday. In the south-east,
the town of Volnovakha has been totally destroyed by Russian bombardment,
according to the regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko. A hospital was destroyed,
forcing people to gather in the basement as pro-Russian separatists took over
the town.
“Volnovakha
with its infrastructure as such no longer exists,” Kyrylenko told Ukrainian TV.
The town is
close to the besieged port city of Mariupol, where new satellite imagery has
shown the widespread damage inflicted since Russian forces surrounded the city
12 days ago.
More than
1,500 civilians have been killed, and humanitarian aid groups say those
remaining have not had access to water or medications in days. Ukraine’s
president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, urged Russia to uphold an agreed ceasefire to
allow evacuations to proceed out of the city, after blaming Moscow for the
failure of previous attempts.
Britain’s
defence ministry has said Russian ground forces were massed 25km (15 miles)
from the centre of Kyiv, Reuters reported. Its residents also woke to the sound
of air raid sirens, and along with the rest of the nation, the words of
Zelenskiy ringing in their ears: “We still need to hold on. We still have to
fight.”
Seven
civilians have died after coming under Russian fire while trying to flee
fighting near Kyiv. Ukraine initially accused Russia of firing at a convoy of
civilian evacuees from the village of Peremoha while they were in a designated
humanitarian corridor, but later said it was not such a route.
In a video
posted to social media late on Saturday night, Zelenskiy urged Ukrainians to
keep fighting, and said Russia could not conquer Ukraine. “They do not have
such strength. They do not have such spirit. They are holding only on violence.
Only on terror. Only on weapons, which they have a lot.
“But the
invaders have no natural basis for normal life. So that people can feel happy
and dream. They are organically incapable of making life normal! Wherever
Russia come to a foreign land, dreams are impossible.”
Zelenskiy
noted humanitarian corridors had been working, with 12,729 people evacuated on
Saturday, and made another plea to the international community to keep doing
more for Ukraine. “Because it is not only for Ukraine, but it is for all of
Europe.”
Russia was
trying to create new “pseudo-republics”, he continued, adding that the city
council members in Kherson, a southern city of 290,000, on Saturday rejected
plans to set up such a system.
The Russian
military has reportedly installed a new mayor in the occupied south-eastern
Ukrainian city Melitopol, after the alleged abduction of the mayor, Ivan
Fedorov, by Moscow’s troops on Friday afternoon. Zelenskiy has demanded his
immediate release.
Russia may
also be positioning itself to use chemical weapons, which would amount to a war
crime, Nato has warned. Its secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, told the
German newspaper Welt am Sonntag that the Kremlin was inventing false pretexts
to justify the possible use of chemical weapons, Reuters reported.
“In recent
days, we have heard absurd claims about chemical and biological weapons
laboratories,” he said. “Now that these false claims have been made, we must
remain vigilant because it is possible that Russia itself could plan chemical
weapons operations under this fabrication of lies. That would be a war crime.”
Meanwhile,
further appeals from global leaders urging Putin to order an immediate
ceasefire have failed to yield results. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron,
and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, spoke to the Russian president,
Vladimir Putin, by phone on Saturday, but a French official said: “We did not
detect a willingness on Putin’s part to end the war”.
The US
president, Joe Biden, has authorised $200m in weapons and other assistance for
Ukraine, paving the way for the immediate shipment of small arms, anti-tank and
anti-aircraft weapons.
The rate of
refugees crossing the Ukrainian border has slowed, but Ukraine’s neighbouring
countries are still struggling to provide shelter for the estimated 2.6 million
who have fled since the Russians invaded last month.
Neighbouring
countries may feel some reprieve over the coming weeks, following Britain’s
announcement of a scheme to accommodate refugees, after intense scrutiny over
its chaotic response to the crisis. British people who open their homes to
Ukrainians will get £350 a month ($456) under a “cash for accommodation”
scheme.
Under the
scheme Ukrainians who are matched and housed with a UK “sponsor” will be
granted leave to remain for three years. They will be able to work, claim
benefits and access public services in that time.
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